Language:

The fact that I am ELL myself, help me to understand the struggles my students are going through. Allowing my ELL students to use their first language help me to create a classroom environment of collaboration. During my practicum, I realize that allowing students to speak their first language made the class more dynamic because when the language was the obstacle to learn a concept, a student that spoke the same language would help the others to grasp the idea I was trying to convey. Furthermore, students felt empowered because when we played music that belonged to their culture I would ask the meaning or the story behind it. Even though it could be argued that allowing an extensive use of the ELL students’ native languages can slow down the process of English learning, I believe that given the cultural shock and different factors that are in place in the immigration process, giving them the freedom of using their first language make, the sometimes traumatic event of leaving a place that they feel they belong, less stressful. Moreover, as exposed by Jim Cummins (1981,1985,2000)”…when we learn to read in one language, we are able to transfer many of those literacy skills to the second language (English). The first language can be viewed as a valuable classroom resource” (Gunderson et al, 2014)

Gunderson, L., D’Silva, R., & Murphy Odo, D. (2014). ESL (ELL) Assessment. In ESL (ELL) Literacy Instruction. A guide to theory and practice (3rd ed., p. 58). New York, New York: Routledge.

Literacy and Culture:

Music (my teachable) is a literacy in itself that demands the use of several other literacies in order to be produced. For example, during my long practicum I taught the concert band a piece from the tango repertoire called “Libertango”, this composition, as any other musical work, has idiosyncratic elements that have to be performed in a particular way. Even though musical notation is the same for any style of music, the interpretation of those symbols and how they represent a culture and its history, requires the acquisition of multiple literacies. However, the availability of information in digital media made this process easier. For instance, I used youtube videos, recordings and personal stories to make this music more approachable to the class. Furthermore, showing the videos help the class to understand what this music was about and therefore improve the expressive part of the performance.

As exposed by Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear,: “Whenever we comment on, say, a film or a book and discuss it with others, we take the original author’s creativity and remix it in our own lives, using it to extend our own ideas or to produce an evaluation”

*Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. (2008). Remix: The art and craft of endless hybridization.  Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52 (1), 22-33

Curriculum, Pedagogy & Assessment

In the school where I did my practicum, students were placed in the different bands according to their level of performance. This process take place at the beginning of the year. The repertoire is selected accordingly to the level they are at but always adding a little challenge. Also there were opportunities for the students to express their musical interests. I tried to design my classes around the idea that in order to create a connection with the students I needed to understand and learn about their realities, aspirations and tastes of music. During my first two weeks of my long practicum I observed which the strategies were my S.A was using to teach. I reflected on what I saw and realized that students learned from experience, from doing rather than long explanations and lectures. Creating an environment in which the relationship between students and teacher was more horizontal, proved to be effective. In terms of assessment, there was a lot of formative assessment, the summative assessment was done in such a way the students had plenty of opportunity to succeed. Understanding that assessing is not putting a mark but another tool to create curriculum and pedagogical tools is paramount. I believe in a pedagogy that use the assessment as another moment of learning for both the teacher and the student.

Furthermore as expressed by Deborah Britzman: “Critical pedagogy in North America would also raise such concerns about whether teacher education might exceed the normative cloak of professionalism and instead, inspire itself to be unafraid to ask new kinds of questions and to receive questions about the preconceptions of our field.”

Britzman, D. (2000). Teacher education in the confusion of our times. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(3), 200-205.

Diversity and Social Justice

In the context of a music class, understanding and celebrating diversity means to avoid stereotypes and select repertoire that represent the diversity of cultures and genders present in the classroom with authenticity. For instance, teaching and explaining the roots of Tango was for me a very rewarding experience because the class understood the personal connection I have with this music. Furthermore, I learned about the stereotypical ideas students had about this kind of music. They realize that what the main stream media portray as Tango is a caricature of the genre. Moreover, we include in our repertoire a suit of folkloric Chinese melodies and this open a debate about the authenticity of the orchestration and how a western perspective was over imposed on these pieces. This was a very valuable learning experience for me, empower students to expose their thoughts and points of view contributed enormously to the performance of the piece because the debate allowed us to find ways of making the performance of the pieces more authentic in character. Additionally, the discussion enriched the class in terms of understanding the idiosyncratic elements of the music and their meaning in relation with the culture it comes from.

As Paulo Freire expressed: “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” ― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed